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Thanks to all who participated in our 1 & 1 workshop on postdoctoral fellowships in the Prevention and Methodology Training (PAMT) program. This is a video of the webinar that Bethany Bray, associate training director of PAMT, presented on Tuesday, November 6, 2018. The video includes both the presentation and the question-and-answer session that followed. The video is an excellent introduction for anyone who is considering applying for a PAMT fellowship. We recommend that you watch this video and follow up with any questions you still have.

In our latest podcast, Ashton Verdery, assistant professor of sociology and demography at Penn State, discusses social network analysis (SNA). One increasingly important use of SNA is to study marginalized populations who are otherwise hard to sample. In health, behavioral, and social sciences, SNA has been used to examine how people relate to one another; how relationships affect the flow of items such as diseases, goods, information, or behaviors; how individual positions in broader network structures affect the risks of contracting diseases, hearing of opportunities, or generating new ideas; and more. In this podcast, Ashton explains the value and challenges of SNA in a behavioral health context. He also discusses projects from his research, including his work studying the heroin crisis in Pennsylvania, kidney transplant candidates, and migrant populations.

Methodology Center Director Linda M. Collins will present the talk, "Bringing Health and Education Interventions into the 21st Century," for the 2018 Schmitt Russell Research Lecture. The talk is open to the public and will be given at 4:00 p.m. on Wednesday, November 7, in the Bennett Pierce Living Center on Penn State's University Park campus. The lecture is part of the Pauline Schmitt Russell Distinguished Career Award from Penn State’s College of Health and Human Development, which Linda was awarded in 2017.

Linda's research focuses on experimental and non-experimental design, particularly for building, optimizing, and evaluating health and education interventions. In this talk, Linda will explore how the methods that scientists use for intervention design can be improved by implementing concepts borrowed from the engineering design process.

Over the last several years, laws about marijuana use have been changing across the United States. Methodology Center researchers Jessica Braymiller, Ashley Linden-Carmichael, and Stephanie Lanza wanted to know how marijuana use and attitudes about marijuana use might be changing in the face of those legal changes. In a recent article in Journal of Adolescent Health, the authors examined these questions using data from the 2010-2016 waves of the Monitoring the Future study.

The authors applied latent class analysis (LCA) to reveal patterns in marijuana use and attitudes among high school seniors in the United States. The analysis revealed that beginning in 2014, increases were observed in two subgroups: nonusers who are tolerant of marijuana use and marijuana users who generally approve of marijuana use at any level (i.e., experimentation, occasional use, and regular use).

Pennsylvania is one of the states most impacted by the growing opioid epidemic, with one of the highest overdose death rates in the country — but a new initiative bringing together experts from across Penn State aims to combat this crisis through data-driven, evidence-based innovation.

The Penn State Consortium to Combat Substance Abuse (CCSA) will draw on the expertise of researchers, educators and practitioners from across Penn State. The group plans to develop and implement effective programs, policies and practices aimed at preventing and treating addiction and its spillover effects on children, families and communities.

The MOST Teachers' Corner provides resources for instructors who want to incorporate instruction on the multiphase optimization strategy (MOST) into methods courses. The download will enable instructors to easily prepare a presentation that introduces MOST during one class session. The MOST Teachers' Corner includes a PowerPoint presentation and recommended readings. Linda Collins crafted the PowerPoint using her extensive experience presenting MOST to new audiences. The slides are designed to make comprehending and presenting MOST as easy as possible.

Thanks to all who participated in our 1 & 1 workshop on analysis of data from a micro-randomized trial (MRT). This is a video of the webinar that Methodology Center Principal Investigator Susan Murphy presented on Thursday, September 6, 2018. The video includes both the presentation and the question-and-answer session that followed. This is the second of two webinars on the MRT. Watch the first video before watching this one. These recordings are a great way to learn the basics of the MRT.

Join Methodology Center Associate Director Bethany Bray for an informational session about postdoctoral fellowships in the Prevention and Methodology Training program (PAMT). PAMT trains postdocs in both prevention science and statistical methodology and is funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse through a T32 grant. The discussion will cover the purpose of PAMT, application process, advantages of the program, and expectations associated with receiving a fellowship. This webinar will be one hour in length; you can think of it as "30 & 30" rather than "1 & 1." The information session will be held on Tuesday, November 6, from 3:30 to 4:30 p.m. Eastern Time.

Join our upcoming 1 & 1 workshop, when Methodology Center Investigator Michael Russell will present an introduction to multilevel modeling (MLM) for intensive longitudinal data. 1 & 1 workshops consist of a one-hour live video presentation on a method followed by a one-hour question-and-answer session with the presenter. The workshop will be held onWednesday, November 14, from 3:00 to 5:00 p.m. Eastern Time.